> “Find better people,” he replied.
I began feeling very much like the author describes in my late high school years. I was nothing like the unpopular guy stereotype though. Yes, between my passion for programming and my introversion I was not exactly a lollypop, but I wasn't the nerd that everyone hated. I was a drummer trying to start a band, occasionally rebellious towards the teachers, and while I wasn't quite the most popular person in the school, my girlfriend was. I went out regularly and thought I had a lot of friends.
Truth is, though, I didn't. I felt increasingly lonely and trapped and misunderstood. My passion for programming was regularly getting at odds with my social life and I felt stigmatized for not giving my friends the attention they needed. Instead of talking to them, I gradually moved my coding sprints later and later in the night which, coupled with some problems I had with my parents, destroyed my sleep schedule (which has actually been messed up ever since).
I gradually shut every door I could shut, in everyone's face, until the loneliness I felt was matched by the lack of human contact; my social life became bleak, my love life pretty much ended as I gave up fighting for a five-year relationship that I was, by then, considering hopeless, and got stuck in a complicated relationship with someone who was about as mentally disturbed as I was (and, to some degree, still am).
Professionally, things weren't bad, but intellectually, I thought they were. Initial good results made me hopeful towards a career in academia, which contributed even more to my reclusiveness, as I spent most of the time I didn't spend on my undergrad courses doing hopelessly narrow-topic research. However, I felt my mind degrading every day, perpetually trailing what I could have achieved if I'd have been, you know, like every normal person. Having your line of thought interrupted by suicide plans every couple of hours is not exactly conducive to steady intellectual improvement. About five years into this, I was battling depression first-hand, and my aversion to therapy meant I avoided seeking help like the plague. I started smoking and began drinking more and more heavily every day. I gave up heavy drinking, but I'm still stuck with the nasty pipe smoking as an occasional relief. I still went out a lot, but almost always alone, to the extent that the owner of the bar I became a regular client of got a small table in a corner, with a single chair, only for me.
"Better people" doesn't sound cliche to me now. Most of my then-friends haven't spoken to me in a long, long time now, but some of them stayed, even as I was shutting doors in their faces. Some of them felt powerless to help me and kept a polite distance from me, and I was hearing from them only on anniversaries or the occasional gathering when I felt strong enough to bear human presence. But they never got away, and stuck by, even though they did all the friendship work by themselves. I never asked them out, rarely asked how they felt and never called them to see how they were doing (so yeah, in retrospect I was an asshole!); but somehow, every few months, I'd still see them for a drink. I still got invited to New Year's Eve parties and, when things were going really rough, someone who I hadn't seen in months popped up with a good word.
My love for programming also brought me close to good people. Between my low self-esteem and my disdain for flipped meritocracy, I was sure I could never get a job (low self-esteem) in a large, well-established company, and I was sure I'd end up hating it even if I somehow managed to trick them into hiring me. I got my first real job in a startup; my programming and electronics skills were, apparently, good enough for my colleagues to respect me professionally, and their kindness and good-temper also meant we ended up getting along as friends -- to the extent that, a long time after the company got disbanded and we no longer work together, we still go out for drinks.
I don't think I will ever come back to my pre-depression self. I always feel it lurking in the back of my head, like a shadow that dangles over me, and it tainted so many things that I no longer see the world like I saw it before. On the other hand, I'm pretty much a functioning individual now. Some things are still hard for me, like going to large parties with people I don't know, but I can do it without breaking down when I get home and spending the rest of the week hugging the pillow and crying myself to sleep on and off. A lot of things helped me here; getting back to my old hobbies again, getting a job I loved, but none of these were as incredibly important as being surrounded by honest friends was.
What's most incredible is that many of these guys didn't even think they did anything grand. They were genuinely surprised when I told them how much they helped me. Many of them felt somewhere along the lines of "I actually felt bad for calling you so rarely and thought you didn't want to hear too much from me because I'd been kind of an asshole". To "normal" people, it probably feels this way, but to someone whose phone rings for weeks at a time only because of SMS spam and payment reminders from the operator, an SMS with "so what's up dude?" is incredibly important.